Minnesota indie-pop band Whosah released their sophomore EP Work just last month, accompanied by “moving picture” streams for each song (which can be seen here). The best part? The videos were made by themselves in order to stay real and honest to reflect their music. Simply put, the EP is a true work of art and everyone should go check it out. Get to know more about Whosah and how the band came to be below!

How did Whosah form and come to be what it is today?Spencer and Dave started a jam band on Sunday afternoons n their parents basement sometime in 2009. Somehow someone heard about what we were up to, and one day someone asked us play as part of some kinda fund raiser/ talent show, and we just got completely hooked on performing together. All the lineup and tunes are different now, but I guess in its purest since, that’s probably how things got started.

In terms of this indie-pop thing, Dallas joined in on the jamming in 2010, followed by Mack, and Whosah was formed sometime in 2013 with the release of “It’s Not Just Me In Here”. Nate, former member of Sing It Loud, started playing bass with us when we were on a tour with another band he was playing with. Mack had moved to Iowa to go to college and was taking a break from the band, so we needed a fill in. When Nate came in, everything started to really feel locked-in in terms of what we were going for as a group. It felt so right from the moment he started playing with us, we thought we’d be torn when Mack decided to move back to Minnesota. Instead, we had Mack rejoin us on a show playing guitar to free up Spenc to interact with the crowd a little more and play more keys parts. That was really when we started realizing we could really bring all these complex synthy studio layers together with actual players doing everything. It’s felt great ever since.

Who are some of your musical influences – both as a band and individuallyYou’ll get a slightly different answer depending on who you ask from the group. We all relate to well-written pop music, but come at what Whosah creates from all kinds of unique angles.
Spencer – Twenty One Pilots makes me want to be myself. Which makes me want to make music that I put all of myself into, they’re a huge inspiration to me. I also am in love with an artist named John Mark McMillan just for his earthy way of talking about deep, intangible things. I also pull influence from a lot of musicians we meet on the road; right now that’s mostly Carter Hulsey, Marina City, and a guy named My Brother the Bear.Mack – Justin Timberlake is an OG with super suave melodic deliveries. I love guitar tones and grooves from The Strokes, and singer-songwriter Ben Rector’s music tells stories with more honesty than Abe Lincoln himself. Also Phil Collins has some serious jams.Dallas – Michael Jackson, The Strokes, Smallpools, The Wombats, Great Good Fine OkNate – Keith Urban, The Starting Line, Kings of Leon, Taylor SwiftDave – Most consistently inspired by 80s pop (such as Toto and the Police) combined with modern flavors like The 1975 and Paperwhite. I also love some of the chill, new “‘verbed out” stuff people are doing, like Aquilo, Purity Ring, and Troye Sivan.

What do you enjoy most about playing shows?The connection we have the privilege of initiating and/or building on each time we play live. We’re not really a “behind the veil” kinda group- after we introduce ourselves and tell part of our story through our show, we like to learn the first names and the stories of as people as we can who took the time to invest in performance. One time after a show Spencer got stopped by this young lady saying she really needed to tell me something. She went on to say that she could tell that we were made to make music. She said she knew that performing on stage is something that brings us to life because she could see in us the same thing she feels in herself when she teaches sign language –and that was what brings her to life. She thanked us for encouraging her to keep pursuing what she loves by pursuing what we love, but we really needed to thank her. Because she shared with us in that moment affirmation for: the reason we make music: to connect with people and encourage them to live full lives.

What do you do when you’re not playing music?Everybody’s got a lot going on in life besides music. Spenc and Dallas have studious engineering jobs, Dave’s married and works in live sound at the college he went to, and Mack and Nate are in college for Computer Science and Nursing. We also love hanging out with our families as a group, hanging out with friends old and new, and traveling to new places (someone from the band’s been to NYC, LA, Florida,etc in the past year). We love board games. We also like doing “family style” activities, like biking, sledding, bowling, ice skating, long boarding, going to movies…they have this crazy game near the Grimes’ parents house called Whirlyball? It’s where you ride in bumper cars and use plastic lacrosse sticks to shoot a ball into a basketball hoop-it kinda plays like hockey. We got a bunch of people together for Nate’s birthday to go there, and that game is CRAZY.